


Nor Time Unmake

by northatlantic (breakthecitysky)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abuse of Celtic Mythology, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Background Relationships, M/M, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 03:27:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5896348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breakthecitysky/pseuds/northatlantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based from <a href="http://tapdatassbutt.tumblr.com/post/90736342951/okay-so-i-woke-up-this-morning-and-i-couldnt-stop">this prompt</a> on Tumblr.  The Winter Soldier is an uncaring spirit, until he is blessed and cursed with a tiny, fragile and stubborn mortal companion.  Monsters! Dragons! Spells! Mortal peril! Fractured not-history! Throwaway movie lines! And a very little smut - probably not enough to make up for the rest of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nor Time Unmake

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [时间亦不能更改](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7616848) by [cindyfxx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cindyfxx/pseuds/cindyfxx)



> With thanks to [achilleze](http://achilleze.tumblr.com/) for the concept, [machine_dove](http://archiveofourown.org/users/machine_dove) for the beta (any remaining mistakes of course my own), [paperdollkisses](http://archiveofourown.org/users/paperdollkisses/) for the cheering section, and as always, [breakthecitysky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/breakthecitysky) for putting up with all the nonsense I drag back to our shared domain here, even if it IS goddamn Bucky Barnes. ;)

“Tell us a story, Gran,” the children say, gathering around and tangling their fingers into her skirts, sticky and grimy, chubby and sweet. 

“Which one?” She wouldn’t mind sitting down for a bit. 

“Tell us about the shieldmaidens who pretended to be strolling players!” 

“Tell us about the Wolfskins and the war against the deep-dwellers!” 

“Tell us about the man with the heart of a star!” 

“Tell us about Aunt Spider and the gyrfalcon.” 

“A new story, Gran,” the oldest says over the clamor, hitching one of the smallest onto her hip in a way that make her ache. She still feels that sharp and bright, is still surprised by the gray hair the mirror shows her, the lines time has drawn on her face and the way her hands ache in the morning chill. She consoles herself that her waist has only thickened a little, and if her back is too stiff to easily scoop up a child it is still straight as a lance, her stride as long as her daughter’s yet. 

Time and cold are cruel, and yet. And yet - she knows what story she wants to tell, now. 

“Bring me a cup of tea, then, and I’ll tell you about the longest winter.”

They bustle around her and settle, the oldest carefully pouring from the kettle on the hearth as she wipes noses and settles the youngest in her lap, reaches for the carding combs and wool. The work won’t wait, story or not. 

“No one knew where or why the spirit had come; some said he was Death’s own sergeant, loosing arrows on the battlefield to mark those who would never come home. A crow with glossy dark wings or a man with crow-wing hair who never missed his mark, the cold he brought with him was the heart Death had frozen lest he show mercy for the valor of the doomed. Others said he had fallen from the hosts of heaven, where the ether was thinner than air could ever be, the color of his eyes as sharp and lethal as the kiss of it in the lungs, like drowning on bare stone. The cold was his rage and grief, a flame of ice, pitilessly clear and burning-white as the air above the treeline if you were foolish enough to climb that high.

If he had a name, the shepherds and farmers and hillfolk didn’t know it. They called him Beorn, the Soldier, and they only spoke it when they had no other choice, whispered so as not to attract his attention. They bowed under the weight of the chill, fought for the lives of their lambs and chicks, their calves and crops, their children, and prayed for that hard and glittering gaze to pass them by--” 

“What happened then, Grandma? Did a mighty warrior come? Was there magic?”

She waits for the children to quiet, the elder hissing at the younger, and then went on.

“War and ice was the spirit’s nature, and although he was without pleasure in pain or slaughter, nor was there mercy in him. Many great warriors thought to make their name by killing him or driving him out, many sorcerers set to bind him or fools to conjure by him. And always he met force with force, anger with anger. And in that anger was an even greater grief, that every hand was against him, to humble him with force of arms or enslave him, the only eyes that met his full of greed, or anger, or fear. And that loneliness ate at him, until even stone had a voice and he raged at the Lady-Mother of us all for one being, one creature who would would bear him company, pleaded like winter wind howling.” 

“The Lady was moved with pity, both for the people suffering winter without end and for the spirit who knew no other way to be. So she offered him a bargain--”

***

“I will give you a companion, but I will have something of yours as earnest.” Beorn fears nothing, has nothing, and yet. The Lady’s eyes are as dark and old as the land itself, the rich color of turned earth both ripe and a wound, her teeth pitilessly white and her lips like blood spilled on the marble of her skin. He feels the thrill of her gaze like something he has forgotten or maybe never known, prickling down his spine. _Alive._

“What will you take?” His voice is rusty with disuse, with the smoke of the sack of a thousand cities, with the day after a thousand battles bellowing orders, sergeant to his men.

“Give me a piece of your heart--” She raises a hand to forestall his protest. “And you shall have a piece of his in return.” 

He doesn’t ask how she can do such a thing without killing him; the Lady does impossible things. It is why he has come. He simply nods his head and waits, steels himself for pain. 

And then frowns as she turns from him to rest her hands against the bole of a tree next to him. Whispering to it in low and liquid tones, she breaks off the branches that bend down to her, her fingers smoothing away the scars of their absence, leaving the bark unmarred. Next, she kneels by a spring suddenly bubbling from the ground, the sere and dead grass of his passage greening around them. She takes a handful of clay to smooth over her willow-switches; it is fine-grained and pale but warmer than the Lady’s flawlessness. Hints of other tones play over it and through it as she molds it, whispers of red warmth, fragile blue and bruise-purple and gold, glowing beneath the surface, dusted in freckles over the top.

Beorn has not forgotten why he is there, but he could, startled by the flowers springing up around the little pool that has formed. The long leaves are brilliant the way nothing around him remains, starred with bright flowers. It is not a thing he has ever thought to look for; he reaches with wonder but halts before touching them, the edges of one burned already with frost and he looks up, stricken, into the Lady’s gaze. An open grave, a grief he does not know how to name or heal opens in that moment and it is a long moment before her fingers make the petals new, the blue deeper than sky and brighter than water brave again as she plucks it. “Gently,” she says, asperity in her tone as she plucks a few blooms and sets in her work. “You must be more thoughtful with your touch, going forward. But you may help with the last piece.” Confused, he looks up from the flowers as she spills a handful of grain on the earth. Green shoots leap up as if reaching for her touch, her fingers wrapping lovingly around a handful of stalks. “Cut them down.”

He kneels and draws the knife from his boot, a quick slice with the blood beating in his chest and stems wither to straw as fast as they sprang to life, gilt and heat and fragility that he had never seen fall beneath his touch and yet suddenly knew it had- but the Lady sets the golden crown of straw she has woven in place and then kisses the handful of wheat remaining before letting it sift through her fingers, the sweet heavy scent of it suddenly overpowering for a moment. Beorn’s head swims and eyes darken for a moment; when it clears, where the poppet of clay and sticks and straw had lain is--

He scowls ferociously at the Lady, because his knives and arrows have toppled generals and kings, and how in the name of all the nameless gods would this tender scrap of flesh, this fragile stripling boy--

Golden lashes lift and this, this is the Lady taking his heart because he can’t breathe, he can’t think, his knees hitting earth and then his hands to steady as forget-me-not eyes meet his, the boy pushing to his elbows with a shy and crooked smile, with no fear, only that endless blue turning to him like a flower to the sun.

To _him_. 

“Stephen,” the Lady murmurs. “This is Beorn, who will guard you and keep you.”

She has taken his whole heart, and he does not care.

***

Stephen drives him to distraction, in admiration and frustration both. Impatient and lovely and loving, and it makes him want to conquer a kingdom just to lay at Stephen’s feet, except that would require leaving long enough to do it.

“Buck, will you just come on?” 

“Put your shoes on,” Beorn scolds back, picking up a blanket. Stephen’s skin mars easily; seeing the marks of their play both thrills and terrifies him, but the marks of rocks and weeds have nothing to recommend them. He follows his heart like a shadow, and wishes he would think about things like shoes and coats and lunch and possibly moats and dragons. Beorn would catch a dragon, if he thought it would help. But Stephen is quick-witted and clever with his hands, and even great wyrms are susceptible to flattery. He would give it a nickname, and draw pictures of it and scratch behind its horns, and Beorn would still find him roaming the hillsides barefoot in a too-thin tunic and stubbornly lugging water all the way up from the stream instead of waiting for him to do it.

“Why? I like the grass underfoot. It’s cool.” He catches at Beorn’s hand. 

“What if you step on something sharp?” He knows all the ways a man can bleed his life out, every way a wound can poison, has seen every one of them. 

Stephen snorts and pulls him out into the meadow, and even his wary eyes can find nothing but sunlight, the air heavy and soft with lady’s-bedstraw and thrift. He lets himself be led, and is pleasantly surprised that there is bread and cheese and early greens in Stephen’s bag along with the little book of painstakingly sewn pages that had cost a good blade. He means to watch and protect, but the warmth and contentment of Stephen humming as he sketches, the scratch of the silverpoint and the drone of bees, the sweetness of the air are all a waking dream. He lies beside him, low-lashed and even suffers his hair to be braided with dropwort and wild thyme, the sharp cool scent and Stephen’s gentle fingers carding through it soothing. 

So many things he had not realized it was possible to want, Stephen’s heart beating in his chest filled with the new-minted wonder and delight of creation. Or perhaps it is his own heart, its cold clay now molded and fired in a gentler shape by that clever touch, the bright and living joy of Stephen putting down roots and cracking the rigid walls of him like ruins overrun with roses. He sighs and reaches up to draw Stephen’s mouth down to his, to taste that sweet and crooked smile. 

“Buck,” he whispers, a bad joke between them. He is no one’s trophy and certainly not a shy and hunted thing, dear to Stephen and hence the name; something beautiful and although still dangerous in defense, gentle. He fears Stephen is sorely mistaken in him, but as long as he is able to allow him to believe it he will. And although he has never trembled before a battle he does now, as Stephen unbuckles his belt and tugs Beorn’s tunic over his head to bare his skin, dragging blunt nails teasingly along his sides. 

They feast in the sun’s warmth, kissing each other unhurriedly, Beorn nuzzling along the silky skin of Stephen’s shoulder as he arches and sighs beneath him, Stephen’s ankle hooking over his thigh. They fuck in lazy strokes of rutting hips and hands on each other’s cocks like the entire world belongs to them before returning to the shade of the house and the cool roughness of the bedsheets. “The garden,” Stephen mumbles, stumbling beside him, sun-reddened and kiss-flushed and dazed with it. “I was going to--”

“ _Sod_ the garden,” Beorn mutters back, earning a poke in the ribs from Stephen that can’t touch the smile still lingering around the corners of his mouth as they curl up together. 

***

He fights the call as long as he can, the first time he has ever resisted his duty but the world has not stopped for him and Stephen. There is ice in the water bucket on the day he dons his armor and slings the sword in its sheath at his hip, the bow over his shoulder. 

Stephen is silent as Beorn arms himself, sullenly poking at the hearth; it is the first time Beorn has never had any joy whatsoever in a fight. But it’s one he needs to win nonetheless--there is no way Stephen is joining him. He will miss him like an amputation, but the only thing less tolerable than Stephen’s absence is Stephen’s injury. If he would only stay where he was told, if he would let himself be protected, that would be one thing, but Beorn knows better than to think it. 

“Ste, there’s so much you can do here--”

“Clean your boots, mend your hose. Do battle with dirt, challenge drafts. Heroic," he says, wrinkling his nose.

“Necessary,” Beorn grits his teeth and takes a breath. “Stephen. I have no home to come to without you. I could as well not come home at all. It won’t be long--” Stephen’s mouth thins unhappily as he looks up and Beorn catches at his hands, draws him close and tucks him in beneath his chin. “Please. Please don’t be foolish.” 

“Come home,” Stephen whispers against his chest. “Just come home.” 

“Hell could try to bar my way,” he said. “But it wouldn’t, not with you at the end of the line.” He smiles, tipping Stephen’s face up to kiss him. “Be good.”

He looks very small from horseback, as Beorn rides away to war. 

***

The snow has drifted up around the cottage, a single flickering light in the window as Beorn returns. He is indifferent to the chill until he opens the door and hears Stephen coughing, a thick wet sound rattling in his chest. 

“Nameless--Stephen, no, don’t,” he says helplessly as the mound of blankets moves to reveal forget-me-not eyes dull and glazed with fever. He shrugs out of quiver and scabbard with more haste than grace, leaving them in a tangle on the floor to get to him before he could get up. “I’m here, love, stay in the covers. How long have you been sick?”

Stephen shrugs and crawls into his warmth, the delicacy of him gone brittle, hollows under his eyes. “A few days. I was cleaning the barn and I couldn’t build a fire with all the straw but I didn’t want to leave it half-done to warm up inside--” 

His own chest is leaden and aching. “Well, we’ll build up the fire and I’ll take care of that now that I’m here.” 

“Buck--”

“No!” he snaps, trembling all over, and Stephen resists for a moment before dissolving into helpless coughing again and finally sinking against him in exhaustion. “Just--we’ll talk about it later,” he whispers against the lank and sweaty tangle of Stephen’s hair. The way his bones press against his skin make him think of that frail bundle of sticks and straw the Lady held, and Beorn is suddenly horribly, horribly afraid. 

“You’re shaking,” Stephen whispers hoarsely against his shoulder. “Undress and come get warm.” 

Nothing can take away this chill, but Stephen’s over-warm body relaxes against his and it helps a little; he won’t hear Beorn’s protests about needing to wash or building up the fire and he can’t bring himself to provoke another terrifying coughing fit. It’ll wait. Everything can wait until Stephen is better. 

***

Ste gets better, but not well, not whole and glowing and brilliant like summer-Stephen and he won’t let Beorn take care of him. No matter how hard Beorn insists, the moment he leaves for the call - or hell, the moment he goes out to the barn to look after the cows and sheep, Stephen slips out. When Beorn returns, he invariably finds him on cold floors scrubbing, or dragging in wood and water, or any number of things his size and frailty ill-suit him for. His hands are perpetually swollen and red with cold, and he gives up drawing because they ache; the hacking cough comes and goes. In a fit of temper, Beorn had once frozen the door to try and keep him where he was put, and Stephen paid for it in a terrifying bout of fever. He can hear the Lady’s voice, _you must be more thoughtful with your touch_ , as he holds him and does not dare to try and offer any coolness. 

Spring finally comes, and Stephen strengthens somewhat although his lungs are still weak. Still fearless and loving and full of warmth, Beorn can almost forget the ordeal of winter, until the first time they’re caught out in the rain. Stephen shakes himself almost apart with the chills, furiously protesting being trapped inside when Beorn makes him tea and nestles him in the blankets. “Will you stop treating me as if you know everything best? It’s my body,” Stephen says resentfully, looking up from the mug in his hands; his hair has fallen over his face, the one blue eye visible both baleful and bloodshot.

“The Lady told me to keep you,” Beorn shoots back, and then kneels at his feet, leans his head against Stephen’s knee; for all his fierce and wounded pride, Stephen’s hand slips out from beneath the blanket to rest on his hair. “Because of all the world you’re the only one who would notice if I ceased to be.” 

“Nameless gods, don’t say it,” Ste says, his voice rough in a way that owes nothing to a sore throat. “You’re the reason I am.” He tries to suffer the care with better grace after that, and Beorn tries to allow him to decide that for himself. But what neither of them can do is keep the winter from coming again. Holding his own coldness at bay is an open wound bleeding Beorn white, watching Stephen burning himself up, fighting to do what he can to care for his love and their home and surrendering a little bit more of himself with each time the cold touches him. Beorn thinks about that, about the day Stephen was made. He remembers the flower he’d burned with the touch of frost that the Lady had healed with the touch of her fingertips, and waits until Stephen is asleep before slipping out to the grove on the hill. 

She is waiting, robed in the dull brown-green of bark and dead leaves, the flicker of a dying fire in her hair and her lips red as a sacrifice. “Beorn.”

“He will die,” he says, desperate, too desperate for niceties. 

“He was made thus, of things that perish,” she replies, brow arching. “What would you have me do?” 

“Heal him,” he pleads. “Give him the strength that matches his heart.” 

She looks down at him. “You love him.” 

“He is a part of me. As much as my arm, my heart.” 

“And if I asked you for both of those things?” 

“He already has my heart, Lady. If my arm will heal him, he has that as well.” 

She studies him a long moment. “And you will do this, that he remain with you.” 

Stung, he whispers, “I will do this to keep him well, and safe. not in pain.” 

“I can do what you ask. But I require one thing more. You ask the greatest gift I may bestow. In return, you must offer the most precious thing you possess.” 

It takes him a moment of frantic thought to realize what she means; he drops to his knees in the dirt before her when he realizes. He will lose Stephen whatever his decision, he realizes dully. But even as it stops his breath, it frees him to act. Stephen lost to him but whole and well, or Stephen lost to him to illness and death - there is only one choice he can make. 

“Do it,” he gasps before he can falter, and the touch of her hand on his head fills him with limitless, endless winter, the storm descending over his mind in a howl of loss. 

***

Stephen awakes with a full-throated scream of agony. The surge of his breath feels like it could tear him apart; the racking, tearing pain sends him into convulsions, rolling into an ungainly heap on the floor. As he fights free of the entangling blankets and tries to catch his breath he realizes with a sense of panic that each breath is coming too deeply, that the hands spread over the floor are too broad to be his, limbs coltish-ungainly. He stumbles to his feet and catches sight of himself in the window--

The image in the glass both is and is not his face as he stares at it; somehow it is both broader and more sharply planed but the shocked eyes are still summer-blue. The width of his shoulders and length of his legs are all unfamiliar, his skin still pale but radiant with health and seething energy. He is taller now than--

“Beorn! Beorn?” He stumbles through their cottage with an increasing sense of dread; where had he gone? What had he done? “Buck! Buck, please, where are you, answer me…” His own clothing won’t fit; he struggles into an old tunic and trousers of Beorn’s to search, circling out and out from their home but he is gone without track or trace. 

He cries then, great gulping tearing sobs lying in the snow, melting untouchable around the new body, a dim awareness there that as much as he might wish the snow to cover him up and take him, this will not be allowed.

“He did this for you,” the Lady says behind him.

He scrambles to his feet at that, turns braced for battle. “What?” 

“He came to me and offered his most precious possession, for your health and strength. His arm, and his memories of you.” 

He stares, unbelieving for a moment, and then whispers, fury boiling up and choking him. “And you took it? You had no right! He had no right! Take it back!” He is howling at the end, hands balled into fists. 

“I made you.” Her voice carries a lilt of warning, but somehow he feels she is--pleased? Amused? He’s not sure.

“Parents don’t own their children,” he says roughly. “Our - it wasn’t his to give, not his alone. Not without my will.” 

She tilts her head consideringly. “There is...justice in that, my Stephen. What has been done cannot be undone, but you have been wronged, and may thus make a claim.” Cool fingers brush his cheek as she leans forward to kiss him; power like a living flame, lightning grounded flows through the contact, leaving him breathless and gasping. “Thus may you return it to him, when you have run him to ground. Go with shield and sword, for he will not know you. And his master Death will not want to return him to you. Sleep. In the morning I will send you sharp eyes to find him.”

***

Stephen does not remember leaving her; he awakens in their bed, alone, still too tall and with an ache in his chest that won’t leave him that has nothing to do with his breathing. He dresses again in Beorn’s clothes; they used to hang loose and enveloping-soft over cold fingers, but this stranger’s body strains against them, throat and wrists bared. But there is still a raw and longing comfort in the lingering scent, the knowledge that the linen and leather are worn to that dear familiar shape and maybe some of who and what he clings as well, Stephen’s heart steeling over with determination as Beorn’s had ice. “Whatever I need to do,” he murmurs, dropping the mail shirt over his head and picking up the shield from its hooks by the door.

A piercing cry sounds above him and he throws up an arm reflexively. He almost staggers at the hit as a great saker falcon strikes his right greave with a thunder of wings. But instead of binding to his arm with talon and beak, the bird hops to his shoulder and nibbles along his ear, preens a strand of his hair. His experience of falconry is all-but nonexistent, but this is beyond the behavior of a tame wild thing, the bird’s eyes not wide and wild but wise and curious. “Sharp eyes, I was promised, ” Stephen says with a crack of laughter, “none sharper, I’m sure, sir falcon.”

The bird preens, beak gaping in what looks suspiciously like a grin before launching himself again from Stephen’s shoulder. “Lead on,” Stephen calls to the sky, his heart a little lighter for the company. 

He walks all day following the falcon’s flight, halting at dusk when it stoops back to his shoulder and starts sticking twigs in his hair and scolding. Taking the hint, Stephen builds a fire in a ring of stones and huddles miserably in his blanket roll. Staring into the flames, he wonders where on earth Beorn might be, if on earth at all and not riding in the train of the Wild Hunt. It does not lessen his resolve, but it does his spirits; even with a magical falcon how in a whole world to search will he find him?

A branch cracks beneath footsteps and he looks up, fierce and desperate, to a stranger’s smile. “You’re not sleeping? It’s your bed, isn’t it. If you can call it that. You haven’t even gathered any bracken. You need your rest, you’ve traveled a long way today.” The man starts to busy himself pulling up armfuls of undergrowth as Stephen, completely bemused, tries to puzzle out who he could be and how he knows him. Something in the quizzical turn of his head, the neat lines of mustache and beard and the lightness of his step - “Falcon?” he says uncertainly, sure he must be mistaken but if he could wake up a different shape than he want to sleep--. 

The stranger’s smile broadens into a flashing grin. “The same. Call me Samuel.” 

“Are you - are you the Lady’s too?” He should be more wary - Beorn certainly would be - but at the moment he is terribly, terribly alone in the world, and the man’s eyes are as calm and wise as the bird’s had been, his smile open and without guile.

“No. But she knew my father’s-father, Jibrael, and they fought side by side in many battles. So when she had need of a scout, she sent to my father. I have not worn the falcon-shape in long and long--” His face closes for a moment, “but you need my help and it is my honor to give it. And in truth it is good to fly again.”

“I’m glad to have you. I don’t think I could do this by myself.” It’s easier to say such things in the dark. 

“Many things are possible with help that are not alone. But the man you’re seeking, Stephen - the Lady told me he doesn’t know you any more. He may not be able to stop from harming you. You may have to stop him from harming anyone else.” 

He feels the words like the wind, ripping through him and chilling him, but there is a dull ache of heat, a beat of anger beneath it. No. No, that will not be true. He will make it untrue, or he will die trying, but it won’t be his hand that betrays Beorn - Beorn who had been given love and then forced to give it away. He is furious, suddenly, trembling with it and Samuel looks at him in wonder as the fire leaps and roars like a dragon, fans out around him like a mantle for a moment before subsiding back to the stones, the ground around him smoking. “You should rest, too. We both should,” Stephen says quietly, when he is sure of his voice. He can still see the reflection of the flames in Samuel’s eyes before he nods, is horribly relieved to see respect there but not fear. He accepts an armful of bracken and spreads it on ground no longer cold, closes his eyes and dreams of ice all the same.

***

“We should seek the Weaver,” Samuel says in the morning.

“The Weaver?” Stephen shoulders the shield once more, the weight of it oddly comforting; it is more familiar to him than the new body that carries it. 

“Some say she is under a spell; some say she is a sorceress herself. She weaves on a loom of spidersilk, cloaks of shadows and tapestries of secrets. She could tell us where your soldier was called.” 

It seems too easy to Stephen. “And what price will she ask for her help?” 

Samuel arches a brow at him. “You had a better idea?” 

Stephen smiles at him crookedly. “Lead the way.” 

Samuel’s grin flashes in return, before his form blurs, between one blink and another the falcon’s wings spreading where the man had been, arrowing into the sky. Stephen shakes his head in wonder, watches him fly for a moment before walking after him.

As dusk approaches, he is set upon for the first time. “That’s a fine shield,” a rough-looking man says, stopping instead of passing by, looking at him with a curiosity that makes his skin crawl, something avid in it, avaricious. Stephen is more used to seeing that kind of look directed at Beorn. “What does a man with no sword need with a shield?” 

“I’m not interested in killing,” Stephen says shortly. “And I don’t like bullies.” 

The man steps forward and grabs the shield, clearly intending to wrench it from his grasp. All Stephen’s anger at what has happened to him and Beorn floods up before he can stop it; the shield smashes into the ugly smirk, and the ruffian flies several feet before hitting a tree with a dull thud, slipping down to fall in a huddle like a broken toy. It’s over before Samuel can alight, Stephen breathing in great gasps although it had taken no effort.

“Are you all right?” Samuel puts an arm around him, spurs him forward and Stephen stumbles for a few steps before he can find his stride. 

“Sam, I...I don’t know what I just did. I didn’t know--it was like the shield knew what to do, my arm.” 

“That’s a good thing, maybe,” Samuel pats him on the back. “Someone who looks as strong as you are, it attracts people who want to prove they’re stronger. You’d be in real trouble if you couldn’t.” 

He wishes for the hundredth time that Beorn hadn’t felt the need to give him this terrible gift. “How far to the Weaver? The sooner we’re home the happier I’ll be.” That both is and isn’t true he realizes, remembering the feeling of surging power, the hum of impact singing in his arm. _Is this what Beorn feels, when he fights? What am I now, and what will I become?_

***

The Weaver lives in a great grim keep, smoke darkening the skies and little flecks of ash flickering in the wind; Stephen learns why when the great horned black head peers out of the gate, one baleful copper eye gleaming at him, the other scarred and milky, nostrils flaring warningly. “State your business,” the dragon hisses through teeth as long as a good dagger.

“I’m here to ask the Weaver a question,” he says, locks his knees to steady himself. “My love was taken from me; I’m trying to find him.” 

“Let him pass, Fury,” a woman’s voice says behind the dragon. 

“I don’t trust heroes,” the dragon grumbles, but retreats until he’s not blocking the way. “They’re all so certain they know what’s right they don’t care who they hurt.” 

The Weaver smiles at the dragon, reaches out to smooth his earspines back as Stephen and Samuel approach. She is smaller than Stephen expected, somehow, all clad in black. Her hair seems to change every time he looks away - one moment a riot of tumbling curls, the next a sleek waterfall past her shoulders, the next in a warrior’s short crop. But the green eyes on his remain always the same, watchful and somber. “None of our hands are clean,” she says, lashes dropping. “But while we live, we can try to balance the scales.” 

“That’s a stupid expression,” the dragon grumbles, “balance scales with what?” He turns to look at her, and in a motion too fast to follow suddenly the great beast is a tall man with a sword-scarred face, a leather surcoat flaring around him like wings as he scowls at Stephen. Stephen wonders dizzily if he is the ONLY one in the world who doesn’t have a shape he can shift back and forth between; he closes his eyes for a moment and reaches down inside himself, but the small familiar shape is nowhere to be found. When he opens his eyes, the Weaver is looking at him with something not quite pity but close enough to it to make him bristle. 

He can tell Sam is full of questions for the dragon, so he follows the Weaver into her parlor alone. The silence lays as heavy as the dust and cobwebs, tapestries muffling the walls three and four thick and carpets heaped on the floor deadening his footsteps. “Do you have another form too?” he asks himself, unable to help it as she seats herself at her loom and picks up the shuttle. 

“The truth is not all things to all people at all times. And neither am I.” She looks over at him, her eyebrow arched, a smile on red lips that is dangerous, inviting and does not touch her eyes. “What would you like me to be?” 

“A friend?” he says wistfully, and he senses an instant of surprise in her before she turns back to the strands of her loom; he thinks that maybe the curve of her mouth is a little more genuine, although her eyes stay searching the strands so he can’t be sure.

“I don’t know if you want to pull on this thread,” she murmurs after a few moments, her eyes full of grief as she turns back to him, a strand gleaming in her hand like blood. “You may not like what you find. Stephen, you were created for peace. He was created for war. What the web will show you--”

He meets that gaze unflinching. “Can I ask you another question? What will happen if I don’t?” She doesn’t answer, and he puts his hand out for the thread.

He is not sure what he expected to see, but he doesn’t just see it. He _feels_ it, the cold biting so deep into his bones it has gone beyond pain, the bow in his left hand nothing to the leaden weight hanging from his shoulder. He can taste iron and salt on his lips, the right hand raw from fletching and gut but the scream is trapped inside him - or perhaps just lost in the moans and cries from the field, the despair as palpable as the metallic stench of blood and mud as his arrow hits the mark and an instant later another rallying point crumbles. He is death, darkness, defeat; he is no longer battlefield chance but the loss of hope. 

The thread slices through Stephen’s hand as the Weaver pulls it free and he stares stupidly at blood dripping through fingers of flesh, not metal, chest heaving and eyes wet. Her fingers fly back and forth, and the strand of red spills across the frame in a rivulet of color against green and gray and blue - “A map,” he breathes. 

“A guide,” she says, “to the place where they hold him. I--” 

A thundering crash shakes the whole keep, a falcon’s enraged shriek splitting the air and the dragon’s louder bellow mingling with it. “You dare! You dare come to MY home--” 

“Fury! Fury, what’s happening?” A knife is in the Weaver’s hand too fast for him to see where it came from; two quick slashes free the map from the loom and she pushes it into Stephen’s hands before running past him. He follows her into a scene out of nightmare, two massive serpentine forms flailing through the courtyard. The black dragon that had seemed so huge and imposing in the gateway is dwarfed by the hissing horror wrapped around it. Several of its heads lift to stare at them, and the Weaver leaps for the closest, throwing a narrow silk cord around itt throat and pulling choking-tight. 

Another head’s mouth gapes, reaching for the Weaver and Stephen is moving before he can think. The thing roars as he smashes the shield into gleaming teeth and its jaw dangles useless and broken; it thrashes in agony and the other heads scream in rage, turning toward him except for the closest, which drops limp and silent as the Weaver leaps free. The falcon shrieks defiance as it stoops, another head blinded by striking talons. Fury’s powerful jaws crush the windpipe of a third. The other heads all strike at Stephen now, and he fights because it doesn’t occur to him to turn away, because the dragon is bleeding from a score of wounds and the woman is crying as she fights, because of Samuel’s gallantry in the face of something a thousand times the falcon’s size, stooping to the attack instead of retreat. Because something sings in his blood, the way it had howled in his vision, hot and alive instead of cold and despairing. The Weaver said he was made for peace; that might have been true once but it feels impossibly far away now. 

The creature is fortunately its own worst enemy in close quarters, the heads unable to work closely enough in concert for a small target without injuring each other. He is bloodied when the last head sinks to the ground, but unbowed as he turns to the others. The dragon is a man again, head pillowed on the Weaver’s lap and irritably batting at her hands as she curses at him in a language Stephen doesn’t understand. “He’s hunting you,” the Weaver says, looking up as he walks over to them, Samuel landing behind him. “The one holding your love.” 

“How is that possible?” Stephen says roughly, going to one knee beside her. 

“The two of you are bound together, or I would not have been able to trace the strands back to him. You are part of him, as he is of you, and that puts part of him out of his master’s reach. Until he has both of you--”

“He’ll have neither,” Stephen says, eyes lighting, something closer to hope igniting in him than he had felt since he’d awakened alone. 

“Or he needs to kill you to get what he wants,” Samuel says, face stern, exchanges looks with the Weaver and Stephen feels a flare of unreasonable irritation when the dragon huffs a rough laugh. 

“You should go somewhere safe,” Stephen says firmly. “Someplace that isn’t anywhere near me.” 

“Or we should stay together, because we’re stronger that way than alone,” Samuel counters equally firmly. “Come and help; the Weaver is bleeding. She needs tending.” The dragon looks at Samuel with a mixture of suspicion and approval as Stephen bends to pick him up and carry him to a bed rather than cold stone.

They settle the dragon and the Weaver in an undisturbed room. And while Samuel is occupied tending the Weaver’s hurts, Stephen slips out of the keep, the map tucked in his tunic for safekeeping. 

***

With every mile, the cold settles more heavily into Stephen’s bones. Even though his new body keeps moving with fluid ease, Stephen feels more and more sick as the grass withers away, the trees along the road leafless, lifeless. Even the sun feels cold and far away. The sky is the icy shade of Beorn’s eyes, and it cannot brighten the steel-clad stone of the fortress rising out of the river below as Stephen crests the final ridge. 

It is a blow to the heart of him, to see that same chilly remoteness in the eyes of the figure standing on the bridge. 

“My faithful Soldier,” Death calls from the tower, a mad grin spreading across the bloody bones of his face. “The one approaching carries your stolen heart. Cut it out of him and be free!” 

“Buck,” Stephen croaks. It is an effort to draw in enough air to speak with Beorn's cold gaze on him; his winter-sky eyes are inhumanly cold, without recognition. “Buck? It’s Ste…” The Soldier remains unmoving, neither advancing nor retreating. Stephen takes a step closer, and his heart sinks as knives seem to leap into Beorn’s hands, wicked jagged edges glinting. He squeezes his eyes closed for a moment and whispers, “Please don’t make me do this--” 

Beorn’s hand snaps forward too fast for the eye to follow and Stephen barely manages to block it in time, the shield tolling the strike like a bell for the dead and he fights to disable, to disarm, to get past Beorn to the one controlling him. Beorn on the other hand fights to kill, and lands the first strike, the knife biting into Stephen’s shoulder. The pain is searing, nauseating but Stephen is richly familiar with pain and it is not enough to slow him as he smashes the shield into Beorn’s chin, knocking him back and winning a few yards closer to the gates before Beorn catches him up and they struggle again. “Beorn,” Stephen gasps. “You know me.” 

There is a split-second of indecision there, and then Beorn's face twists with rage. “No, I don’t,” the Soldier grits out, lands a second strike in Stephen’s leg and he can’t suppress the gasp of agony. 

Stephen manages to grasp his hand and wrench it back, something cracking as he does it and the animal moan that escapes Beorn hurts Stephen more than the wounds. He wonders, the thoughts increasingly far away, if he can get past Beorn without hurts that won’t heal. If he can win his freedom without - and realizes that he has forgotten the Lady’s gift. “I won’t fight you,” he chokes, even as the blade strikes home in his gut. The bright tearing pain of it is something he knows instinctively has measured his life in moments, spilling through his fingers as he clutches at it. Only moments to do what he came to do, and the shield falls from his arm - but he doesn’t need a shield to keep Beorn at arm’s-length any more. It will only hinder him now. “Your heart is here,” he whispers. “You will have both, yours and mine, and it will follow you, through hell and heaven both, until.” He coughs wetly. “Until the end of the line,” and fists his hand in Beorn’s hair to pull him down, press his lips to his. The last thing he sees as his vision darkens is the light of recognition dawning in Beorn’s eyes; it is a comfort that feels like warmth. 

***

Beorn wakens from one nightmare into another, worse, as memory floods back and he realizes what he has done, the beautiful golden strength of Stephen - _his_ Stephen - turning ash-pale in his arms. He gathers up man and shield both as Death screams in rage, leaps into the river and holds him as tightly as he can as the water carries them away, the shield raised over his head to protect them both from the bolts loosed after him. 

Stumbling out of the water with his burden some way downstream, he is startled by the sound of wings. He looks up to the sight of an enraged dragon carrying a sorceress and a falcon stooping toward him, talons outstretched to strike. He folds around Stephen, unable to do more than that. But instead of the raking pain of claws, fingers fist in his hair and yank his head up as the dragon lands in a thunder of great wings. “If you have killed him--” He looks up at a man with the falcon’s sharp planes of face and intently focused rage in his eyes, and realizes with desperate hope that the strangers are there not to harm Stephen, but to help him. 

“Then I don’t care if I live or die.” Beorn clutches at the stranger’s wrist. “Please, if there is anything you can do to heal him, or take him to someone who can. I can only hurt him--but I can stop the ones following us. Will stop them, even if the nameless gods ride with them.” The tears are freezing on his cheeks even as he says it, his eyes terrible and the falcon-man looses his hold with an oath, shaking fingers gone numb. Stephen starts to shudder in his grasp; he hastily loosens it, lays him gently on the ground. 

“There is a binding between you,” the redhaired sorceress says, stepping closer. “The pain you have caused you can take back.” 

“A hundred times. A thousand. How?” She takes out a spool of silk thread and a dagger, green eyes dangerous - but Stephen’s breath begins to rattle in his throat and Beorn knows Stephen has no time, despite the falcon-man binding his hurts. He closes his eyes and puts out his hands in surrender, praying she is telling the truth; she slashes his palm open, folds the spool in his hand and draws a strand free. Head spinning, he watches as she threads a needle and begins to sew up Stephen’s wound with it, can feel the strength steadily bleeding out of him even as a little of Stephen’s color returns, breath easing again and strengthening. He frowns as she breaks the thread and reaches for the spool instead of continuing, asks with lips stiff with cold, “The other wounds - his shoulder, his leg?” 

She shakes her head. “It is enough. Those wounds will heal on their own. If you are going to defend him, you will need to be strong enough to do it.” 

The dragon bends his head, smoke wisping around them as he rumbles menacingly. “Your master made a shambles of my home with his beast.” 

Beorn laughs, a cracked and crazed sound. “If you will come with me, I will do my best to tear his down and sow the earth with salt. You are welcome to burn it first if that would ease your heart.” 

“Done,” agrees the dragon, the spines of his crest lowering a little. “Mount, then. It’s tedious to wait for you groundlings walking.” 

Beorn looks at the falcon-man and the woman, kneeling with Stephen. “He should be somewhere warm, somewhere safe. Bring him there, and you may command me forever.” 

“Men are idiots,” the redheaded sorceress says tartly. “That won’t be necessary. You might think, while you wait for your battle, about the sort of promises that got you into this disaster in the first place.” But she smiles as she says it, as does the falcon-man, although he ducks his head politely to disguise it.

He waits until Stephen is safely carried to the sorceress’ keep, the dragon watching him. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” the dragon rumbles curiously

“I can’t,” he says, staring at his feet. “I hurt him, no matter what I do. He doesn’t need me any more - if he ever did. He deserves someone without blood on his hands, ice in his heart.” 

The dragon snorts, brimstone-hot, eye incredulous. “My lady is right, men are idiots. He’s your mate, what makes you think he’ll stop tracking you? How are you to make right what you’ve done if you’re not there? Of all the tales I’ve heard of the Winter Soldier, cowardice wasn’t one.” 

Beorn hisses, but the sting is earned; his shoulders slump as he rests his forehead against gleaming hide. “I’m not ready,” he murmurs. “And it’s not safe, not until I’ve made the hydra’s master know they can’t take me back.” 

“Then come,” the dragon says, bending his head for Beorn to climb on. “Defend your nest, avenge the fallen. But your worth is not in your strong arm or keen eye, but in your head and heart. I keep TELLING archers that. Maybe one of these days, one will even listen.” 

Beorn’s smile is painful, the feeling almost-forgotten, but he thinks perhaps it will be easier to remember how as time goes on, the dragon launching himself skyward to the hunt. “Maybe.” 

***

Stephen awakes slowly, aching in every bone the way he hasn’t in what feels like a long time, the firelight on stone walls for a moment heartwrenchingly familiar until he touches the fine weave of the sheets and blankets with too-large hands, realizes the watchful shadow beside him is Samuel, not Beorn. “On your left,” he rasps, and Samuel looks up with a smile gone careworn at the edges but still warm. 

“Hadn’t imagined you’d disappeared. Again.” 

Stephen winces. “I’m sorry, Samuel. I just, I couldn’t ask anyone to follow me.” 

“Two of a kind, you and your Beorn,” Samuel rolls his eyes, and Stephen looks into the shadows hopefully. “He’s not here,” Samuel says softly, and Stephen sinks back, closing his eyes in defeat. “He went with Fury to beat back the pursuit.” 

“Nameless--he didn’t have to do that alone, or at all!” 

Samuel puts a quelling hand on Stephen’s chest, pushing him back down to the bed when he tries to struggle upright. “And neither will _you_ go haring after him still hurt. Or alone. Fury will bring him back to you - by the scruff of the neck if required. A dragon is persuasive like that. Maybe he needs some time after what happened - what almost happened.” 

“That’s exactly what he DOESN’T need, Samuel,” Stephen protests feebly, all too easily imagining what might be going through Beorn’s head. 

“I see he’s well enough to be difficult,” the Weaver murmurs, coming in with a bowl of soup. “Stephen, as much as you want him to believe you, it’s not enough for Beorn that you tell him he is all right. He needs to know it for himself, that his mind and heart are his own again. Let him test them, and when he’s ready his heart will bring him back. More strands yet bind you now, love and pain and duty. They will guide him home.” 

Stephen closes his eyes. “I hate waiting.” 

“Exactly no one is surprised.” The Weaver shakes her head and Samuel laughs, following each of her movements with those sharp, sharp eyes. Stephen feels both glad and hollow watching them together. 

***

The deepest winter is past when Stephen finally returns to the cottage he and Beorn shared, although the dirty remnants of snow and mud, and the cold rain that wash them away does not do much to lift his spirits. He does not let that keep him from repairing the damage winter has done to their home; the work that would have taken him days when he was small and frail a matter of hours. 

_More strands bind you now_ , the Weaver has assured him; they tangle choking-tight around his throat and heart and occasionally it is hard to breathe beneath the weight of them. He finds excuses that take him back to the Lady’s grove again and again, but it remains just a stand of trees. There is no magic there, no answer for him, not now. He breaks the silverpoint Beorn had given him the first time he picks it up, and tears the page. For days he does not touch it again, but Stephen is nothing if not stubborn about things that hurt. He gradually relearns the lightness of touch, the fluidity of stroke that shield and fists have made foreign as the days lengthen and the grass greens in their meadow.

He has no heart to look at that renewal, but the falcon screams outside his window and drops rocks on his roof until he feels too stupid to stay inside. When the rain keeps them near the fire Samuel tells him about rebuilding the Weaver's keep and every smile he earns doing it; on sunny days he teaches him to hunt with another friend, a bluff and cheerful man with a crest of blond hair and merry gray eyes, who sometimes wears the shape of a redtailed hawk. He learns the bow and tracking because it pleases them to teach him; but all he can remember is his vision of Beorn’s hands worn raw and bloody with the bowstring and his heart is not in it. The sun feels like a promise, however, and their voices remind him he is not alone in the world, although sometimes he feels as if he is. Occasionally the wind will bring a hint of brimstone and steel; occasionally, his new skills will show him broken twigs and crushed grass and this feels like hope, if one he will not speak even to himself. 

The days pass one by one into the fullness of high summer, the evening before the longest day of the year. Stephen tries not to think about earlier years and forces determined cheer as he weaves oak twigs and meadowsweet together for a garland on the doors and windows, lays down tinder and kindling for the bonfire and gathers an armful of sweet-scented herbs to throw on the flames. Shortest Night is a time to let go of the hurts and defeats of the year, for the light and heat of the sun that day and the flames through the night to drive out the darkness of heart and mind.

At dusk, he goes to light a candle at the hearth to kindle his bonfire; it falls out of his nerveless fingers, the flame extinguished in the great gust of wind from black wings settling to earth before it can hit the ground. “They light those fires as a charm to drive away dragons, you know,” Fury says, lip curling in a silent snarl at the fire laid in the pit. “Ignorant savages.” 

“Do they?” Stephen says hoarsely, all his gaze taken up with Beorn, hair lank in his face and eyes downcast, moving like a sleepwalker as he slides down the dragon’s neck to dismount. “That seems...Misguided, fire for dragons. I would call it a welcome, rather. There is wine, if you want it.” He is rambling; he wants to rush over and take Beorn in his arms, but Beorn’s haunted eyes make him freeze, afraid his first impulse will provoke fight or flight. “Buck. Do you remember me?” His voice drops, low and gentle. 

“I...You’re taller,” Beorn whispers. “Strong. Whole.” 

Stephen’s face twists. “Not without you,” he says, voice hoarse with the tangle of emotions. “Never whole, without you, not if I live forever.” He steps forward at that, seizes Beorn’s hands, flesh and metal, one fever-hot and one icy. 

Beorn makes a small frantic sound but doesn’t step away. “I am...not what I was.” 

“Neither am I,” Stephen says. “You gave me a gift unasked. I give you one now - Lady and nameless gods witness, whenever your heart is lost I will pay its ransom whatever it costs. So if you will keep me safe, you may do so by guarding yourself.” 

Beorn collapses into his arms, and Stephen sinks to his knees cradling him; the dragon grumbles softly with a mixture of amused fondness and disgust, a puff of smoky laughter over them before he lights the fire with a breath. “Not a welcome, that fire but a warning - here be sweetness fit to rot a good set of fangs, and I'm off to heed it. Be well.” Stephen raises a hand in farewell as Fury leaps from the ground, wings his way into the darkness.

They do not speak, but Stephen eases off the bloodied rags of Beorn’s tunic and feeds it to the fire. Beorn’s eyes stay on his hands as Stephen trims the straggling ends of his hair; when Stephen has finished he finally meets his gaze, lifting the crown he's plaited of rue and meadowsweet and oak to Stephen’s head. They share the cup of honeyed wine, Stephen trembling with the taste of Beorn’s mouth on the rim of the cup. "The last time I touched you," Beorn whispers, "I hurt you." 

"The last time you touched me," Stephen whispers, a choke in his voice, "when your mind was your own, I was another man. And I am still yours to have, but I don't know if--" Beorn reaches for him before he can finish the thought, the gentleness of his hands and mouth the same, for all that Stephen is not, the tenderness that he remembers familiar even as the feel of Beorn coming to rest against him is undiscovered country now, an exploration to be made anew.

As the first rays of light touch the sky, Beorn falls asleep resting against Stephen’s side, and he whispers thanks to whatever power is listening as the sun rises on the Longest Day.

*** 

“And did they live happily ever after, Gran?” the oldest asks when she pauses.

She laughs, kissing the top of the youngest’s head where he had fallen asleep in her lap. “Why don’t you ask your uncle Ste? You can pile the wood when he’s done splitting it.” 

“Uncle Ste--but it’s a story,” the oldest scowls. “And he lives alone--” She falls silent, as she realizes that cottage is on the edge of a meadow, high on the mountainside, an antique targe hanging on the wall and an equally old bow on pegs. 

“Does he,” Gran murmurs, and the curve of her lips is brilliant and pitiless still, her eyes dark and full of secrets as she watches the children go.


End file.
